Audio 3:47
Australian business failing to take advantage of returning expats

Nick GrimmUpdated
Sat Jul 13 10:04:00 EST 2013

As overseas economies suffer, increasing numbers of Australians are returning home after stints working overseas. But it seems business may not be immediately recognising their skills and these expats are finding it hard to get paid at the level to which they're accustomed.

Transcript

SIMON SANTOW: It appears Australia's traditional 'brain drain' - people heading overseas to live and work - has gone into reverse.

Increasing numbers of the nation's expats are coming home, with record numbers of monthly arrivals.

But there's concern that Australia is ill-equipped to capitalise on the flood of new skills and expertise expats bring home with them.

Nick Grimm reports.

NICK GRIMM: Like many young Australians who come home after their big overseas adventure, Nancy Panter's out of work and looking for a job.

But in her case that stint overseas involved more than travel and meeting new people.

She held down the role of director of global brand and marketing public relations for the multi-national credit card company Visa.

Amongst other things it took her to some of the world's biggest sporting events, like the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup.

NANCY PANTER: There is a lot of very innovative, smart, talented Australians who are living and working overseas. There's a tremendous amount of knowledge that can help the Australian community and Australian businesses.

The challenge really is: how do we capture that?

NICK GRIMM: It used to be that ambitious and adventurous young Australians would head for places like London and New York to work in the big time.

But now Bureau of Statistics figures reveal a major shift in Australia's so-called "brain drain" with growing numbers of expatriates heading home again after spending a year or more abroad.

February and March this year broke new records for monthly arrivals outside the busy Christmas period.

Some say they're economic refugees of a kind fleeing the impact of the global financial crisis on overseas economies.

ROBYN FAWCETT: A lot of the people are coming home now are finding that they're out of work over there and coming home.

NICK GRIMM: Robyn Fawcett is another former expat.

As a digital marketing manager for the independent record label Shock, she's used to keeping her career on the move, staying abreast of the latest technologies and the fast evolving world of e-commerce.

But she says it took her career years to catch up again after she returned from overseas five years ago.

ROBYN FAWCETT: So when I came back I had all this amazing, you know, knowledge and stuff that my Australian colleagues just didn't really comprehend and it took another big international music business to understand what that actually meant and how it could be relevant to their business and actually drive them forward.

NICK GRIMM: Pamela Young advises Australian businesses on strategic change and she's interviewed current and former expats for a new book exploring corporate Australia's lack of diversity.

She says business is squandering the skills and expertise of those who've worked overseas.

PAMELA YOUNG: Most returning expats find that they have to take a lesser job for lesser money and prove themselves all over again.

There's a massive economic cost. We're not tapping in to the global knowledge that they have, the networks that they have. It does impact you psychologically for a period of time, because you start to wonder, is it you, but then you work out that it's not you, and then they have to put a couple of years back into climbing back up the ladder again.

NICK GRIMM: And as the flow of expats back home increases, another trend is also apparent - fewer Australians are departing these shores to work overseas.

Robyn Fawcett again:

ROBYN FAWCETT: Well it's absolutely true. I mean a lot of my younger mid-20s friends are just not going to London.

It's not the pilgrimage it was even five years ago - five to eight years ago - when I went.

One of the things I really noticed amongst my friends coming home to Australia is that they do value local experience in Australia, but once you get beyond a certain point - maybe it's that five to ten year mark - I find that people that have the international experience, like the ones that worked professionally in London actually leap ahead quite quickly at that point.

So they're the ones that are more likely to be kind of your GMs or CEOs at 35 or 36 rather than 45, I think.